


No Matter Where We're Going

by SunSpell80



Series: Let's See How Far We've Come [3]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Even Malia, Everyone wants Stydia, F/M, Valedictorian Lydia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-22
Updated: 2016-03-22
Packaged: 2018-05-28 08:00:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6321415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SunSpell80/pseuds/SunSpell80
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"In your life you’re going to find people who try to limit you. But you’re also going to find people who bring out the best in you. The more you explore the world and yourself, the more likely it is that you will find those people. Those are the kinds of people you will keep coming back together with. The people who will stay with you, even after death. The people who you will spend the rest of your life with…grow old with…They’ll always come back to you."</p><p>- Lydia Martin's Valedictorian Speech, May 2014</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Matter Where We're Going

Stiles was melting. He could feel the sweat dripping down his back, drenching his dress shirt underneath his robes. Someone really should have checked the weather and suggested holding the ceremony in the lovely air-conditioned gym instead of on the lacrosse field on the _hottest day of the year so far._  

Or even moved the ceremony to morning instead of four o’clock in the afternoon, so the sun was at the perfect angle to not only blind everyone in the crowd, but also burn their faces off. 

The vice principle was droning on and on about responsibility and commitment, but Stiles had stopped paying attention five minutes into the ceremony. Instead he and Malia were competing to see who could design the best paper airplane from the stack of programs he’d swiped. They tested them out by trying to hit each other with them, much to the initial amusement (which quickly turned into annoyance) of the three people sitting between them.

“…and now you go on to become part of something greater than yourselves. Congratulations, class of 2014.” Mr. Greenshaw stepped back from the microphone and a smattering of awkward applause broke out, swelling once people realized he was finally done speaking. 

“Thank you, Vice Principal.” Principal Thomas stepped up. He looked about as excited as the students did, probably glad to be rid of what had to be the most stressful class he’d ever dealt with. “It’s my pleasure to now introduce our Valedictorian: a most remarkable student with one of the finest minds I’ve ever seen. Class of 2014, your Valedictorian and Class Speaker, Lydia Martin.”

Malia stuffed the airplane she was folding into her robe pocket and straightened up, paying attention to the one part of the ceremony any of them actually cared about. 

Lydia looked very red with her sunburnt cheeks and maroon robes, but she walked onto the stage as if she were ascending a runway platform in Paris. She plastered on a huge smile as she approached the podium, obviously nervous. Okay, maybe not _obviously,_ but Stiles could easily tell she was nervous.

“My fellow students,” she began, voice a little high and fake to his ears. “Today is the day we’ve been waiting for our entire lives. Every choice we’ve made, every test studied for, every game attended…it’s all led up to today.” 

Her eyes darted around, taking in the faces of the disinterested crowd. She made eye contact with Stiles for a split-second and he took the opportunity to grin at her and mouth _relax_ before fanning himself dramatically with a half-folded paper airplane.

Lydia’s mouth twitched and she visibly settled into herself a little more. “And I have to say.” She remarked casually, going off script for a moment (Stiles would know - Lydia has performed this speech for all of them at least ten times in preparation, and he’s personally read and listened to it at least _twenty_ ), “In all the years I imagined today, never did I consider how god-awfully _hot_ it would be.”

That coaxed a round of chuckles from the crowd. 

“No, but honestly,” Lydia continued with a grin, hitting her stride. “We’re all sitting here, boiling under these heavy robes, thinking _good god when will this end_? We can’t wait for the ceremony to be over so we can head off to various graduation parties and exactly how ‘responsible and adult’ we are.” Everyone laughed at this, even Principle Thomas gave a grudging smile. “Part of me is right there with you all. But at the risk of sounding like an utter cliche, I encourage everyone to take a second and soak in the moment. Forget about the sun for a second and your legs cramping from sitting on the bleachers for too long. This _is_ a momentous occasion in our lives, simply because we’ve been looking forward to it so long. Every student who has passed through these halls has imagined sitting on these bleachers today. But not every student is here with us.”

All other chatter ceased. Everyone in the crowd was giving Lydia their undivided attention now. Lydia’s eyes flitted to Stiles again and he nodded encouragingly. 

Originally, Lydia had not wanted to give a speech at graduation - it was a little known fact that she hated public speaking. After Principle Thomas had given her the good news about earning Valedictorian (not that there was any surprise there), Lydia had found Stiles in the library and told him she was considering giving it to the Saludictorian instead.

_“I feel like nothing I’ll have to say will be relatable.” She confessed quietly. “I can’t talk honestly about most of my experiences after sophomore year, and I really don’t care about school in the way a Valedictorian should.”_

_Stiles twirled his pen between his fingers in thought. “I don’t think that’s fair.” He told her. “I mean, yeah, most of our classmates don’t spend their extracurricular time battling evil supernatural forces, but pretty much everyone has_ some _clue about the shit that’s been going down. And yet they still stayed. There’s gotta be a reason for that.”_

It had come to her several days later, when she watched a couple girls post a note on the locker of one of the kids who _Le Bete_ had killed. 

They had stayed for the memories of their friends.

“Today is a day of celebration.” Lydia remarked quietly. “But I believe it would be remiss to ignore the tragic reality that our graduating class has had the highest mortality of any class in Beacon Hills High history. Everyone here has lost someone they used to walk to classes with, play on team with, or eat lunch with. A year and a half ago, I became one of those people when my best friend died.

“At first, I couldn’t imagine a life without Allison.” Lydia’s voice swelled with emotion. “As time went on, I realized that I would never have a life without her. She always found her way back to me, whether it was through shared memories with other friends, seeing her locker in the hallway, or just the occasional thought of ‘Allison would have loved that.’ There’s an apt saying that a person dies twice: once when their soul departs this earth, second when their name is said for the last time. As long as we remember the people we lost, they’re never truly gone.

“I know that people are afraid of what the future is going to hold for us all. Many of us have lived in this town our entire lives, seen the same people every day since we were children. Some of us are staying here, others are going far away. It’s a very natural, very _human_ response to cling to each other, to be terrified of leaving each other. But a good friend told me something important: that people who are supposed to be together will always find each other.”

Stiles’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. Not only was she deviating from her speech again, but she was quoting him. Lydia met his eyes and winked at him before addressing the rapt crowd again. 

“So I encourage all of you not to be afraid. Go out and do what you’ve always dreamed of. Pursue a degree in art, climb a mountain, canoe down the Amazon, do a community play, join Teach for America, audition for a talent show…just go _live_. Don’t worry about what you’re supposed to be doing and definitely do not hold yourself back to stay with the people around you. If you think you’ve found the people you want to spend the rest of your life with, excellent. If they’re truly important to you, you’ll find ways to stay in touch and be together without limiting each other.”

This was the part where Lydia was _supposed_ to wrap up her speech, but she continued on a completely different track.

“On the topic of limiting each other…those of you who knew me as an underclassmen might have been the _tinniest_ bit surprised to find me standing before you today as Valedictorian.” This got a round of laughs and Lydia grinned good-naturedly. Stiles was confused about where she was going with this, but he couldn’t help beaming, proud to see Lydia in her element and thriving. The speech was running a little long, but no one seemed to mind, genuinely enjoying listening to what she had to say. 

“The truth is that I allowed myself to be limited by what I thought others expected of me. I thought in order to be liked I couldn’t let anyone know that I loved learning - that I’d be seen as a know-it-all, or a goody-two-shoes. I thought I had everyone fooled. But one day this _ridiculous_ boy who I barely knew informed me that he knew my secret and told me I should stop pretending to be stupid so I could focus on writing an insane mathematical theorem and winning the Nobel Prize.” Her face was redder now, but Stiles was sure his was redder. She was quoting him again. Why did she keep quoting him? And why hadn’t any of this been in the speech he heard a billion times? “I basically told him that he was an idiot - the _Field’s Medal_ is for mathematics, not the Nobel Peace Prize…” 

The crowd burst out laughing and Stiles ducked his face, which he was now certain matched his robes. 

“…and we’ve been friends ever since.” Lydia continued. “The point is, in your life you’re going to find people who try to limit you. But you’re also going to find people who bring out the best in you. The more you explore the world and yourself, the more likely it is that you will find those people. Those are the kinds of people you will keep coming back together with. The people who will stay with you, even after death. The people who you will spend the rest of your life with…grow old with…” Here her voice faltered slightly and Stiles went very still. She wasn’t looking at him. Her eyes darted briefly toward the section of the crowd he was in but she wouldn’t look at him. “They’ll always come back to you. So go on and enjoy the rest of your lives. Don’t worry about saying goodbye to your friends. If they’re the people you’re meant to always be with, they won’t make you stay behind with them. They’ll move forward with you. Thank you.”

The crowd erupted in applause but Stiles couldn’t move. He couldn’t breathe. He could barely hear the people next to him complimenting Lydia’s speech. All he could do was replay her words over and over and over again. 

_The people who you will spend the rest of your life with…grow old with…they’ll always come back to you…_

The rest of the ceremony stretched on for an eternity. Stiles tried his damnedest to enjoy the moment like Lydia had told them to, for Allison, for Erica, for Boyd…but he kept playing back her words and his stomach clenched tighter and tighter. It must have been noticeable, because Malia hadn’t bothered to try getting his attention again and was instead making origami shapes from her paper now. 

At the end of it, after their caps were thrown in the air and everyone was scrambling around trying to find the cap with their name written inside, Stiles pushed his way through toward the middle of the students. His cap was probably getting trampled, but he didn’t care. 

As a kid, he’d always loved puzzles and mysteries. Most people would probably assume it was the process he adored - the craziness and disorder of connecting dots, the hyperactive jumping from one hypothesis to the next. But that wasn’t it.

It was the quiet. 

That single, quiet moment when everything faded away and the truth was right there in all its simplicity.

It wasn’t an epiphany. There was no “aha!” It was a quiet, deeply personal moment where his intensely extroverted self turned introverted as it all came together.

It was clarity.

 _Clarity._ That’s what he was feeling now. Simple, quiet, clarity.

It should have been impossible to find Lydia in a sea of red, but Stiles could always find Lydia. _People who are supposed to be together will always find each other._ She was clutching her cap with both hands, beaming as countless people approached her with congratulations. Her fair skin was almost lobster-red at this point even though he’d watched her apply about ten layers of sunscreen before the ceremony, but it was barely noticeable between her wide grin and twinkling eyes. 

Lydia noticed him when he was about ten feet away and though it seemed impossible, her smile widened. “Stiles!” She called, waving at him with her cap, as if he wasn’t already making a beeline toward her, pushing through the crowd. “I think it went really well!”

“It was perfect.” He agreed. “A little different from what you practiced, though.”

“I practiced it.” Lydia refuted him as she reached out for him and pulled him into a hug. “I had two variations of my speech…I only decided which one I was going to do when I was up there.” 

Stiles nodded, feeling oddly calm. “Why didn’t you show me both of them?”

“I…” Lydia faltered. She looked up at him, uncharacteristically shy. “I wanted to surprise you. I wanted this to be the first time you heard it.”

“Why?” They should have released their hug at this point but they both kept their arms around each other.

“Because I wrote it for you.” Lydia admitted. She bit her lip and her eyes flicked down to his mouth before meeting his eyes again, her own huge and hopeful.

 _Just kiss her._ The impatient voice in his head sounded oddly like Allison and Stiles grinned briefly before obeying.

Lydia went rigid for half a second but before he could panic, she pushed her lips back against his and wrapped her arms around his neck, pulling herself up onto her toes. Stiles opened his eyes slightly to see her smiling into the kiss and he cupped her cheek with his left hand, craning her face up to him. Lydia exhaled into his mouth, pressing into him more feverishly.

Stiles’s brain short-circuited at that point and he vaguely registered six things.

1.) Lydia’s lips tasted much sweeter than the first time they’d kissed. He distantly recalled her and Kira gossiping about a sugary lipstick they’d discovered and how they should wear it whenever they were anticipating a make-out session.

2.) Lydia was pressing her boobs against his chest. Heaven was real.

3.) His hair was _really_ sweaty and he had no idea how Lydia could stand to be touching it right now.

4.) Even with heels Lydia was quite short and he had to lean down and she had to use him to stay balanced and it was _fucking adorable_.

5.) Lydia’s hair was extremely soft and not sweaty in the slightest and smelled like raspberries.

6.) People were clapping.

It took him approximately twelve seconds to register that last fact and about twice as long to care. Eventually he and Lydia pulled back, out of breath and with flushed faces that had nothing to do with the heat. For several long moments Stiles just stared down at Lydia, who looked more unmade and carefree than he had ever seen her. Her hair was messy from where he’d run his hands through it, her lips were swollen and her lipstick was smudged, and she was gazing up at him like she had that night in the Animal Clinic after he’d helped rescue her from Eichen: with wonder, awe, happiness, pride, and (he was almost certain now) _love_.

Noise penetrated the little bubble they were existing in.

“Get a room!”

Stiles turned to see Brian Turner, a lacrosse player, snickering before being elbowed sharply by a nearby girl. That’s when he realized that _everyone_ in the nearby vicinity had turned to watch them and were…yup, they were clapping and cheering for them.

“Finally!” Someone unseen cried, causing everyone to burst into laugher.

“Thank you, guys.” Lydia said dryly, but her sarcasm was offset by the brilliant smile splitting her face in two. Stiles knew he was grinning just as hard because it was actually causing his face to ache.

“C’mon.” He muttered into her ear, putting an arm around her shoulders and tugging her into his side. “Let’s go find the others.” 

Lydia kissed him on the cheek and slid her arm around his waist. Together they maneuvered their way through the rowdy crowd, all whom seemed bent on expressing their personal congratulations to the two of them in one form of the other, whether it was an enthused thumbs up or a exclamation of “ _get it,_ Martin!”

“This is crazy.” Stiles said, shaking his head. “I think they’re more happy about us making out that _we are_.”

“I doubt that.” Lydia murmured, and he turned his head to look at her again. “Stiles, I -”

“There you guys are!” Scott’s voice rang out. They both turned to see him waving them over, a knowing grin on his face. Right behind him, Malia was sitting on the bleachers as one of the graduates handed her something. “I just heard the _craziest_ rumor.” He continued, smile stretching across his face. “Apparently, the Valedictorian and her friend just started _making out_ as soon as the ceremony finished. Crazy, right?”

“Completely.” Lydia deadpanned.

“Totally crazy.” Stiles agreed. He looked past Scott’s shoulder and saw another graduate walk up to an oddly smug-looking Malia and hand her something again. “Wait, are people paying Malia? Why are people paying Malia?”

Scott rolled his eyes, his grin staying in place. “Apparently there was this bet going on about when you two would get your shit together. Everyone who participated pledged a dollar and whoever picked the correct date got all the money.”

“Oh my god.” Lydia looked horrified. “What? Who would bet on something like that?”

“Malia, apparently.” Stiles knew he should probably be mad, but he still felt strangely high, like he was dreaming or something, and it was impossible to feel anything but blissful. Besides, he was glad that Malia was making money off her ex-boyfriend and best friend making out. 

“Well, nobody told me about it because they figured I would narc.” Scott shrugged. “Which I guess is fair, I mean I probably would have told at least one of you what was going on. You can’t just bet on people’s - _Kira?!”_ He exclaimed in horror as his girlfriend attempted to subtly drop off a dollar bill in Malia’s lap. She gave them a sheepish grin and ducked back into the crowd, presumably in search of her parents. Scott shook his head and followed after her.

Lydia huffed. “I can’t believe them.”

“I can,” Stiles laughed. “That sounds exactly like the sort of no-boundaries thing our friends would do, betting on when we got together -”

“So wait.” Lydia interrupted, tugging his hand so his body was facing her again. “That wasn’t a ‘high school is over so yolo’ kind of kiss?”

“Okay, first of all, I can’t take you seriously when you use ‘yolo’ in actual conversation.” He teased, causing Lydia to smack him lightly on the arm. “And secondly…no.” His voice dropped. “I mean, not for me. It wasn’t for you, was it?”

Lydia kissed him in reply. Stiles happily pulled her closer to him, a little surprised at how natural it felt to have her pressed against him. Like her curves and his edges were made to fit together.

“Definitely not.” Lydia breathed as she pulled away. “Definitely, definitely not.” 

“So we’re doing this then.” Stiles had to say it aloud in an attempt to make it all seem more real. He glanced down at one of his hands resting on her waist. Five. This was real. “You really want to do this.”

“I thought that was obvious.” Lydia quirked her eyebrows at him. “I mean, I _did_ practically confess my feelings for you in front of the entire school up there.”

“You said you wanted to grow old with me.” Stiles teased, feeling a jolt of happiness when Lydia flushed in response. “You love me and you want to have my babies and grow old with me. When you’re old and senile and in a rocking chair you want _me_ in the rocking chair next to you, judging everyone else in the nursing home and making snarky comments to you.”

Lydia shook her head, like she was regretting what she was about to say. “The crazy thing is,” she confessed. “I think I actually do.”


End file.
